Disaster Recovery Key

Disaster Recovery Key is an easy to use and reliable solution for the automatic on the fly recovery of a broken system. Using Disaster Recovery Key you can restore your system to the point of the most recent backup.Disaster Recovery Key always installs a specific version of the software and restores a backup if available, it can be used in case of a faulty system or if a system becomes unrecoverable after an upgrade.

Get a clean USB stick, then log in to the Endian Network, go to the recovery keys download page and choose the appropriate image for your device.

Note

The USB stick's filesystem must be in FAT32 (suggested) or EXT2 format.

Unzip the content of the recovery stick package and put the three files onto the USB key. You should find the following three files:

recovery.uInitrd

recovery.uImage

recovery.ubi

Plug the USB stick into the Endian Appliance and create an USB backup by going to the Appliance GUI from System > Backup > Create new backup and tick on Create backup on USB Stick. Select at least Current configuration backup type.

Note

If you left the USB key plugged into the Endian Appliance, nightly backups will be created on this USB key. In case of a disaster recovery, the recovery key automatically uses the most recent backup for restoring.

After the backup process, make sure that in your USB stick you have the 3 files recovery.uInitrd, recovery.uImage, and recovery.ubi, and a folder efw-backups, in which one or more backup files are stored.

Backups are .tar.gz archives, don't change filenames because they will be used to validate the backup.

Start the System Recovery Using your Recovery Key - Newer appliances

This procedure works on the vast majority of Endian ARM Appliances whose hardware is newer than December 2012.

Warning

This procedure will erase all your data from MicroSD card, so make sure you have a recent backup of your data.

Connect to Endian ARM Appliance through serial console (here an easy guide to connect via serial console) and make sure the disaster recovery key is plugged into the device.

Reboot the device and press any key as soon as you see: Hit any key to stop autoboot.

At the prompt, write

Marvell >> run recovery

then press Enter.

Now you see the disaster recovery installer running.

Wait until the screen says !!!!!!!!!!!!! FINISHED SUCCESSFULLY !!!!!!!!!!!!! and don't worry if some errors appears.

Troubleshooting

If the procedure described in this section ends immediately with the following error, please follow the procedure described in the next section, Start the System Recovery Using your Recovery Key - Older appliances.

Marvell >> run recovery## Error: "recovery" not defined

If the procedure does not start or if you experience some error that stops the procedure at some point or that does not produce a recovered and working system, you should try to use another USB key for the recovery procedure.

Start the System Recovery Using your Recovery Key - Older Appliances

This procedure applies in all cases when the run recovery command fails.

Warning

This procedure will erase all your data from MicroSD card, so make sure you have a recent backup of your data.

Connect to Endian ARM Appliance through serial console (here an easy guide to connect via serial console) and make sure the disaster recovery key is plugged into the device.

Reboot the device and press any key as soon as you see: Hit any key to stop autoboot.

If you have formatted the USB stick with the FAT32 filesystem, type in the following code, pressing the Enter key only once after each line: